How to link to a date

Most of the time you will want to link to a Universalis page in general (instructions
are here) so that when your readers click on the
link, they get the content for the current date. But sometimes you want the
opposite. For instance, you may be running a blog and you may want to comment
on the Office of a particular day.

The first thing you will notice about the above link is that it doesn't work.

Any link you make will work for a limited period only: from about a month in advance of the date to a month after the date. Whatever use you make of our links should take account of this. With blog entries it usually isn't a problem, because a blog entry is mostly read when it is quite fresh.

The rules

You aren't allowed to copy and paste content from our pages into your blog
or web site. This is for copyright reasons.

You are allowed and encouraged to make links to our pages from your blog
or web site.

How to do it

1. Visit the page you want

First, go to the page that you want your link to point to. Note the web address
that your browser reports. This is the address that you need to use.

If you can't reach the particular date you want, don't worry: we'll sort
that out in a minute.

2. Check that the link identifies the correct date

If your link looks like this:

http://www.universalis.com/20090514/today.htm

then it is identifying a specific date, in year-month-day format. Check that
it is identifying the date you want. If it isn't, change the 8-digit number
so that it identifies the correct date.

If your link looks like this:

http://www.universalis.com/today.htm

then it is a link to today's Universalis page and will change from one day
to the next. To anchor it to a particular date, insert the 8-digit date number
for that date, as shown in the previous picture.

3. Check that the link is for the right local calendar

Most of the time, you will not need to bother with this section.

Different parts of the world use different local calendars, which differ
from the General Calendar in various ways. For instance, some parts of the
world celebrate Corpus Christi on a Thursday while other parts celebrate it
on a Sunday.

The calendar you are currently using is Europe - Wales. If you want
to change this, click here.

You can easily recognise whether a link has a calendar name in it. Here is
a link without a calendar name:

http://www.universalis.com/today.htm

and here is the same address set to use a local calendar:

http://www.universalis.com/Europe.England.Southwark/today.htm

If you think there is a risk that a date will have a different feast in different
places, make sure that your link includes a local calendar setting. If for
any reason your browser doesn't include a local calendar in the address, use
the Local Calendars page to find a link that
does.